Dopo la pazza folla, un angolo nel cuor,
ħarruba tal-Maqluba, the scent of open air,
prado, acantilado, el girasol en flor,
mon âme qui se baigne dans le Poème de la Mer. [...]
ħarruba tal-Maqluba, the scent of open air,
prado, acantilado, el girasol en flor,
mon âme qui se baigne dans le Poème de la Mer. [...]
from Samota
Introduction
January 2005, Madrid. Having spent the first five months of a two-year stay in Qrendi –the village in southern Malta where I had spent part of my childhood– I returned to Spain to hand in the first draft of my thesis and to visit family and friends. As beautiful as I find the city of Madrid, particularly for its architecture and cosmopolitan lifestyle, the constant hubbub, hustle and bustle of the metropolis briefly brought back the feeling of disorientation and claustrophobia I had lived through the previous year. Working in the centre of Madrid had been an interesting albeit remarkable nightmare: commuting from one building to another across an asphalt jungle, craving the scent of open air as an escalating sense of closure pressed against the insomnia-ridden self, the urbanisation of the human psyche rapidly broadening the inexorable rift between man and nature… I could feel Madrid's diverse cultures being swallowed up by the increasingly uniform appearance of the city streets. When plurality becomes uniformity, the charm and appeal of variety tends to be lost. Uniformity is different to unity: the former is monotonous and bland, whereas the latter allows mutually distinct voices to coexist in harmony and interact to different degrees. In the metro, in the crowds, amid the heavy traffic, I could hear phrases in various languages floating around my head. Seizing their rhythm as best I could, I sat down and attempted to combine each utterance in a logical sequence, exploiting their sounds whilst trying to maintain a serious tone. I thus wrote my first multilingual sonnet, In città, documenting the paradoxical sense of meaninglessness I felt in the city and expressing contentment for having rediscovered the guileless delight of rural life. Although not altogether satisfied with the result, the poetic experiment had begun.
The idea of experimenting with multilingual verse had been hovering in my thoughts for quite some time. Until a couple of years before, I had written poetry in Spanish, in Italian and in English, yet I found it difficult to decide which language I felt more comfortable with. Choosing one, or even two, would have meant sacrificing others, and to a certain degree, I felt that making a choice would also imply a political decision. Why the obsession with one as opposed to many? With the desire to take advantage of the phonetic nature and literary allusions of each language, whilst working and studying in Alcalá de Henares, a small University town in the outskirts of Madrid, this idea had materialised into an opera libretto written in a combination of four languages (the three mentioned above, plus French), a burlesque account of modern man's consumist habits, the use of religion as a means to structure and limit people's judgment according to certain interests, and the ease with which we create and celebrate new heroes. I had also begun to write multilingual song lyrics, mainly on the destruction of the environment, the arbitrary nature of political borders and the myth of nationality, albeit with a more light-hearted touch. For a time, these works were in search of a musician, yet as preliminary attempts at combining the sounds and rhythms of different languages in poetic form, I did not find them satisfactory. There was a lack of balance, and I felt that setting the works to music would only serve to accentuate their failed cohesion.
The Maltese language, which I was in the process of re-learning after over a decade's absence from the islands, was just the ingredient that I needed. The presence of Maltese in the song lyrics had been minimal. In the new sonnets, the Semitic structure and consonant sounds of the language provided greater variety, density and room for manoeuvre, whilst its Romance superstrate and vowel sounds linked it to the use of three of the other tongues, mainly to Italian. One of the main aims of this experiment is to play around with the sounds of each language in an attempt to gel them into a single rhythm, and in fact, I found that Maltese words can be rhymed with all four of the other languages, be it by consonance or assonance.
Macaronic verse and the mosaic
The reason behind the choice of the name mosaic (or mużajk, mosaico, mosaïque – the title need not be written in any language in particular) may be obvious, but as I shall explain below, it goes beyond the mere combination of sounds and languages. I make no claim to originality, and whether these mosaics are to be considered a form, a genre or both is not a question for me to answer. Multilingual poetry –often called 'macaronic' verse– has existed for centuries. In the middle ages, we find non-liturgical carols written in a mixture of vernacular and Latin, which were particularly popular in the land we today know as Germany. Later on, in 16th and 17th century Italy, we find poems composed in a mixture of Italian, Greek and neo-Latin, very often satyrical, with a lot of the vocabulary actually invented on the spot. Naturally, macaronic verse is especially common in cultures with widespread bilingualism: for example, a great deal of bilingual poetry was written in 19th century Ireland; meanwhile, in Maltese literature of the same period, we find the bi and tri-lingual poems of Ġan Anton Vassallo, where Italian and English are mainly used to add an ironic effect. One modern Maltese exponent of macaronic verse is Victor Fenech, who, like Vassallo, interleaves English lines to add an element of sarcasm to the poetry:
January 2005, Madrid. Having spent the first five months of a two-year stay in Qrendi –the village in southern Malta where I had spent part of my childhood– I returned to Spain to hand in the first draft of my thesis and to visit family and friends. As beautiful as I find the city of Madrid, particularly for its architecture and cosmopolitan lifestyle, the constant hubbub, hustle and bustle of the metropolis briefly brought back the feeling of disorientation and claustrophobia I had lived through the previous year. Working in the centre of Madrid had been an interesting albeit remarkable nightmare: commuting from one building to another across an asphalt jungle, craving the scent of open air as an escalating sense of closure pressed against the insomnia-ridden self, the urbanisation of the human psyche rapidly broadening the inexorable rift between man and nature… I could feel Madrid's diverse cultures being swallowed up by the increasingly uniform appearance of the city streets. When plurality becomes uniformity, the charm and appeal of variety tends to be lost. Uniformity is different to unity: the former is monotonous and bland, whereas the latter allows mutually distinct voices to coexist in harmony and interact to different degrees. In the metro, in the crowds, amid the heavy traffic, I could hear phrases in various languages floating around my head. Seizing their rhythm as best I could, I sat down and attempted to combine each utterance in a logical sequence, exploiting their sounds whilst trying to maintain a serious tone. I thus wrote my first multilingual sonnet, In città, documenting the paradoxical sense of meaninglessness I felt in the city and expressing contentment for having rediscovered the guileless delight of rural life. Although not altogether satisfied with the result, the poetic experiment had begun.
The idea of experimenting with multilingual verse had been hovering in my thoughts for quite some time. Until a couple of years before, I had written poetry in Spanish, in Italian and in English, yet I found it difficult to decide which language I felt more comfortable with. Choosing one, or even two, would have meant sacrificing others, and to a certain degree, I felt that making a choice would also imply a political decision. Why the obsession with one as opposed to many? With the desire to take advantage of the phonetic nature and literary allusions of each language, whilst working and studying in Alcalá de Henares, a small University town in the outskirts of Madrid, this idea had materialised into an opera libretto written in a combination of four languages (the three mentioned above, plus French), a burlesque account of modern man's consumist habits, the use of religion as a means to structure and limit people's judgment according to certain interests, and the ease with which we create and celebrate new heroes. I had also begun to write multilingual song lyrics, mainly on the destruction of the environment, the arbitrary nature of political borders and the myth of nationality, albeit with a more light-hearted touch. For a time, these works were in search of a musician, yet as preliminary attempts at combining the sounds and rhythms of different languages in poetic form, I did not find them satisfactory. There was a lack of balance, and I felt that setting the works to music would only serve to accentuate their failed cohesion.
The Maltese language, which I was in the process of re-learning after over a decade's absence from the islands, was just the ingredient that I needed. The presence of Maltese in the song lyrics had been minimal. In the new sonnets, the Semitic structure and consonant sounds of the language provided greater variety, density and room for manoeuvre, whilst its Romance superstrate and vowel sounds linked it to the use of three of the other tongues, mainly to Italian. One of the main aims of this experiment is to play around with the sounds of each language in an attempt to gel them into a single rhythm, and in fact, I found that Maltese words can be rhymed with all four of the other languages, be it by consonance or assonance.
Macaronic verse and the mosaic
The reason behind the choice of the name mosaic (or mużajk, mosaico, mosaïque – the title need not be written in any language in particular) may be obvious, but as I shall explain below, it goes beyond the mere combination of sounds and languages. I make no claim to originality, and whether these mosaics are to be considered a form, a genre or both is not a question for me to answer. Multilingual poetry –often called 'macaronic' verse– has existed for centuries. In the middle ages, we find non-liturgical carols written in a mixture of vernacular and Latin, which were particularly popular in the land we today know as Germany. Later on, in 16th and 17th century Italy, we find poems composed in a mixture of Italian, Greek and neo-Latin, very often satyrical, with a lot of the vocabulary actually invented on the spot. Naturally, macaronic verse is especially common in cultures with widespread bilingualism: for example, a great deal of bilingual poetry was written in 19th century Ireland; meanwhile, in Maltese literature of the same period, we find the bi and tri-lingual poems of Ġan Anton Vassallo, where Italian and English are mainly used to add an ironic effect. One modern Maltese exponent of macaronic verse is Victor Fenech, who, like Vassallo, interleaves English lines to add an element of sarcasm to the poetry:
Sun and limestone everywhere,
djar, vilel kullimkien
(imm' għall-għarajjes fejn?)
want a place in the sun?
show us your money…
you can have one!
Għax lilha, Mulej,
bl-oħla dawl libbist…
Malta fil-lsien u l-qalb
Malta Maltija! 1
djar, vilel kullimkien
(imm' għall-għarajjes fejn?)
want a place in the sun?
show us your money…
you can have one!
Għax lilha, Mulej,
bl-oħla dawl libbist…
Malta fil-lsien u l-qalb
Malta Maltija! 1
Macaronic poetry is often used as a vehicle for humorous social criticism, but also as a ludic exercise and linguistic challenge, or simply for the delight of hearing different languages in unison. One example well-known to English poetry is A. D. Godley's Motor Bus, written in a mixture of English (both modern and old-fashioned) and Latin; another example, a love poem written by Lord Byron in 1810, closes each verse with a refrain in Greek. Ezra Pound went as far as including Chinese characters in some of his Cantos -as well as quotations in European languages other than English-, whilst T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land contains well-known lines in German and Sanskrit. Closer to our times, one of the main inspirations for my multilingual experiment is the technique of 'collage' used in many of Franco Battiato's popular songs of the 1980s. Chanson Égocentrique, Up Patriots to Arms and Cuccurucucú Paloma all combine Italian lyrics with lines in other languages, whilst other celebrated tracks by the Sicilian songwriter end with a free stanza often containing references to the lyrics of other popular international groups and singers. See in particular the delicious nonsense ending of Passaggi a livello, built on four-syllable words and phrases in six different languages:
Good vibrations, Satisfaction, sole mio
Cinderella mit violino, Lux eterna
Galileo, douce France, Nietzsche-Lieder
Kurosawa, meine Liebe
mister Einstein on the beach.
Cinderella mit violino, Lux eterna
Galileo, douce France, Nietzsche-Lieder
Kurosawa, meine Liebe
mister Einstein on the beach.
Nevertheless, in all of the mentioned examples, we find that one language provides the main framework of the text, which is then peppered by the use of other languages to add an exotic and very often comical and ludic effect. In this respect, the mosaic is intended to be different: except in particular circumstances, there is an attempt to balance the use of each language as equally as possible, such that no single tongue takes prominence over the others, each one forming an integral part of the poetic fabric. That said, depending on the theme, influences or starting point of each mosaic, there are a few poems where one or two languages have a more dominant presence: such is the case of Ciao amore ciao, with references to traditional and modern Italian love songs, as well as Bateau Ivre, partly inspired by Rimbaud's symbolist poem of the same name (but without the article). At the outset there was also a tendency to conclude the mosaics in Maltese, particularly as the poetry became more personal – one poet friend has even suggested that this exercise may be a mere process of transition towards writing monolingual poetry in Maltese. However, although I still write monolingual poetry from time to time (mainly in Maltese and Spanish), I hope to continue giving priority to the experiment of multilingual verse in the years to come. I find the mosaics a great deal more challenging and exciting, partly for their cosmopolitan feeling – although of course, we should readily admit that the languages used are all 'Western', and our world is certainly a lot larger than Europe and the Americas.
After having written seven or eight of these poems and referring to them rather clumsily as 'multilingual sonnets', I decided to simply call them mosaics. Classifying them as macaronic or otherwise will depend on the breadth of the definition given to this term. They are mosaics not only of sounds, syllables and languages but also of literary references and topoi, and above all, of poetic decisions, in an attempt to achieve a successful interaction of the different elements. The name mosaic also refers to the external form of the poems, as I shall now explain.
The sonnet: a natural choice
As I have been carrying out research on the origins of the Spanish sonnet since 1999, it was only natural that I would choose this poetic form for my multilingual experiment. I had already written several sonnets in Spanish, although today I would only dare publish a few of them. The sonnet has a certain geometric attraction to it: appearing to the eye as a rectangle or square depending on the number of syllables per line, the sense of harmonic proportion given by the two parts of the Petrarcan variety (8+6 or 4+3) conveys an idea of unity and completeness. Charles Baudelaire himself once said that the sonnet possesses une beauté pythagorique; in fact, according to today's most widely-accepted theory, recently developed by Wilhelm Pötters on the basis of research previously carried out by Ernest Wilkins, the invention of the sonnet in early-13th century Sicily may have been partly inspired by Archimedes' approximate fraction for π (22/7), and thus by the form of the circle.2 The dimensions of Giacomo da Lentini's original sonnets –14 lines by 11 syllables–, which would be perpetuated by thousands of poets in different languages way into the 19th century and beyond, are closely related to the numbers of this fraction, whilst the area of a rectangle of the same dimensions is equal to that of a circle of radius 7 – which in medieval Europe was of course considered a magic number.
This academic theory partly explains the circular nature of the sonnet, in Pötters' words, "geometry in metric form". This is related to another basic element of the sonnet form: the importance of logic. Aided by its neatly fragmented structure, the sonnet allows for the easy arrangement of a rational argument, with each stanza forming one or more hermetic yet interrelated parts of the discourse. In some of Petrarch's best examples, the two quatrains contain two premises, the first tercet a transition, all leading to the conclusion presented in the second tercet or even in the final line. The sonnet's tight configuration effectively encapsulates and organises a logical thought or reflection, combining unity and beauty of content with harmony and splendour of form.
In the mosaics, the logical chain of discourse is intended to be structured not so much by the form of the sonnet itself as by a succession of phrases, clichés and images supported by the play on sounds, with allusion and association of ideas leading the reader to the final conclusion. Thus the mosaics not only combine different languages into a single rhythm but also into a single thought, and in many cases, literary references and intertextuality are aimed to contribute to the essence and general feeling of the poem. Influenced as I am by postmodernist writing and structuralist poetic criticism, I firmly believe that dialogue between texts is what keeps literature alive. To some extent, the mosaics are also intended as an act of tribute and admiration to poets I have enjoyed reading, be they old or contemporary.
Just as ancient and modern mosaics often have a square or rectangular shape, so too do these poems. In effect, they are not written in hendecasyllables but in alexandrines – each line is made up of two hemistichs of seven syllables each (or six when the accent falls on the last syllable, as always occurs, for example, in French and often in Maltese and English due to the phonetic nature of these languages), thus giving the mosaics the form of a 14 by 14 square. Sonnets written in alexandrines were of course common in 16th and 17th century France, as well as in modernist poetry in the Spanish language, one of the principal exponents being the Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío. I chose this syllabic line not only because I had used it quite extensively in my Spanish poetry, but mainly due to its flexibility and adaptability to each language, as well as the ease with which it can be split in the creation of internal rhyme.3
More so than to be read, these poems are designed to be heard. For this reason I include recordings of each selected mosaic. The quality is not perfect, but they should give an idea of the intended poem delivery. There is a certain theatrical element to the poetry which I believe should be exploited, something I hope to continue to develop in the not too distant future. The experiment is still at an early stage, and I have recently begun to play around with other languages beyond the main five mentioned above, so far including Czech, Dutch, Hungarian...
The first series of mosaics appeared in July 2007 in the self-published anthology Ħbula Stirati (Tightropes), alongside the work of four Maltese poet friends. One of the reviewers of this book very validly poses the question whether the mosaics are the zealous attempt of a poet-linguist to break down the insular walls of the Maltese language in order to broaden his audience, or whether the poems aspire beyond the demands of recognition and consumption and look more to transcend the slavery imposed ipso facto by the regime of 'a single language' on the free spirit of the poet. The first supposition is not entirely false, but the second is much more accurate. Whether or not the mosaic can be a humble (or not so humble) manifesto taking unity in diversity another little step forward, towards a poetry which is at once local and supranational, remains to be seen, and this I believe will ultimately depend on the content more than on the mere form.
I hope you enjoy the poems I have produced so far as much as I enjoy composing them.
Antoine Cassar
August 2007
August 2007
1 Taken from Friggieri, Oliver, 2000. Dizzjunarju ta' Termini Letterarji (Malta: PEG), pg. 436. This is the closing stanza of a longer poem called "Din l-Art Ħelwa, Din l-Art li Alla Tana" ('This sweet land, this land which God gave us'), which effectively parodies the words of the Maltese national anthem and other patriotic poetry. A rough translation: «Sun and limestone everywhere, / houses, villas everywhere / (but where can lovers go?) / want a place in the sun? / show us your money... / you can have one! / For her, Lord, / you clothed with the sweetest light... / Malta in the language and the heart / Malta Maltese!»
2 See Pötters, Wilhelm, 1998. «Nascita del sonetto: Metrica e matematica al tempo di Federico II» (Ravenna: Longo Editore); and Wilkins, E. H., 1959. «The Invention of the Sonnet and other studies in Italian literature» (Roma: Ed. di Storia e Letteratura).
3 This type of line is known in Maltese as the vers Martelljan, used for example by Ninu Cremona and Rużar Briffa. See Friggieri, op. cit., pg. 442. Together with alessandrino, Italian uses the labels martelliano and doppio settenario.
